‘Cate, are you sure?’ ‘You asked me to check out anyone who left the restaurant, so I did,’ she said, her voice dull and low. ‘Bill said he was going shopping, but he went to that house and went inside and I heard the shot. I broke in and I found, I found . . .’ Marcus waited patiently. ‘I found the professor and he was only just dead. No one else went in or out of that house – it could only have been Bill who shot him. But just now he was talking, chatting, laughing like nothing had happened.’ She gulped and Marcus gave her a hug. ‘God, Cate, I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘But please, I have to know everything,’ She told him, as simply as she could, and then turned to him again in terror. ‘I nearly died, Marcus, right there in the house. I was nearly blown to pieces.’ She was crying properly now, hot tears running down her cheeks. ‘It’s OK, Marcus,’ she continued, half laughing at his startled expression. ‘I don’t make a habit of blubbing. It’s just that it was pretty scary back there and I thought that if I died no one would have ever known how it happened or even find my body.
